Dispatches from Vilnius

Van and Eric have become comrades in arms in this age of coronavirus, lashing out at what they view as an oppressive regime imposing lockdowns, and making them take vaccines against their wills.  They imagine their latest song, Stand and Deliver , will become an anthem to the oppressed, in which they liken their lost freedom of choice to slavery.  This was the last straw for Robert Cray, who refused to open up anymore shows for Eric Clapton. The problem with all this grandstanding is that it will probably help Van and Eric sell their anti-vax albums and live shows.  They are fast becoming the darlings of the MAGA crowd.  Who knows, Donald may even add "Stand and Deliver" to his campaign play lists. All this has left a bitter taste in my mouth, similar to when Neil Young dumped his wife Pegi,  after 30 years of marriage, to run off with Darryl Hannah.  I didn't want to listen to anymore of Neil's music but made an exception for the Buffalo Springfield years...

If America is starting to resemble the country Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged, it is no coincidence.  It seems that a lot of American billionaires have found ways to sock away their money that would be out of reach of any billionaires' tax, meeting each year in Davos (Galt's Gulch) to discuss their strategies for saving the world, with nothing more than empty commitments coming out of it.  What they have managed to do is consolidate an incredible amount of wealth, leaving the vast majority of the country, and by extension the world, scrambling to make ends meet.   It took a while but Lithuania now has a handful of billionaires, who like to consider themselves self-made.  Like the architect who got stiffed by Trump , my experiences have not been positive.  Suffice it to say, I don't have any sympathy for billionaires, or millionaires for that matter.  I know that they didn't earn it.  They made their money off the backs of others.  If th...

There is a marketing agency in Vilnius called Truth.  I like their email address: hello@truth.lt.  They appear to do a lot of advertising, or rather marketing work for local companies with some nice looking logos , or rather branding, that is a cut above other such efforts I have seen in Vilnius.  I don't know how much truth there is in it, but I imagine much more than will be Donald Trump's new social media platform . It may not be the death of irony , as George Takei jokes, but the title should give everyone pause.  "Truth" was the banner head of the Soviet Union propaganda machine, although they called it Pravda , the name of the state newspaper.  Trump doesn't make much effort to disguise his sources.  Interesting that Donald chooses to launch his new political organ on the eve of the Virginia governor election, a little more than a week away.  The conservative candidate is a staunch Trump ally, although Youngkin has tried to distance himself in th...

All Hallow's Eve has become a pretty big event in Vilnius with all sorts of parties around town, haunted houses and even an orientation run on the theme of Halloween Radioactivity that was staged a few years ago.  However, the one I remember most fondly was the Halloween party we had at Daina's flat my first year in Vilnius. I had been in the country barely one month.  I had just gotten to know her children and was wanting to engage them in something fun, as they were still a little bit of scared of this new man in their lives.  They didn't speak much English, and I hardly a word of Lithuanian, but Daina would translate stories at bedtime that seemed to ease their worries.  As Halloween approached, I had been coming up with ghost stories, which they thoroughly enjoyed and Goda wanted badly to celebrate the evening.    She took the lead, as she did with such events, dressing up her little brother and herself.  We were unable to find anything other than ...

October is always a mixed bag when it comes to the weather.  Starts out cold and foreboding, then warms up with a week of Indian Summer, only to vacillate back and forth as the cold and warm fronts try to figure out what to do.  The sidewalks are covered in maple and linden leaves, the two most popular trees in Žverynas, but it is the oak leaves with their rounded edges that I like the most. The dog has been anxious to go for walks.  The cat follows us part way along Lenktoji St, before ducking into a yard, only to pop back out when we return and follow us home.  She wanted to finish her breakfast.  The dog much calmer now, giving me a few moments of relief as I work at home today. I've decided to limit my time at the office to three days per week, which is what I'm paid for anyway.  The mood hasn't been good ever since the failed movie night a few weeks ago.  My wife still insists on going to the office everyday, despite similarly being paid part time...

The #MeToo movement, or whatever it has morphed into today, has certainly forced us to reevaluate our relationships, mostly for the better.  Men in power find it is not so easy to get away with the antics they were able to get away with in the past.  You may not face jail time, but you certainly will find plenty of embarrassment if you overstep the bounds when it comes to unwanted sexual advances.  Just ask Andrew Cuomo? That said, the movement has taken yet another quixotic turn.  The lyrics of rock songs are now being questioned.  Rather than risk further offending anyone, The Rolling Stones decided to drop Brown Sugar from its concert set list, a fan favorite they have been playing for decades.  Keith seemed a little bemused by this because in his mind it was about the "horrors of slavery."   It is a weird song as it drops all sorts of intriguing references  but ultimately seems to be about having dirty sex with black women.  I can w...

I spend a lot of days at home, not so much because of the ongoing pandemic, but because I prefer to work at home.  The office lost its appeal to me a long time ago, largely because of the distance that has developed.  There was nothing more to be said when it came to talk around the coffee maker, which funny enough became a point of contention, or going out to lunch.  We had all pretty much retreated into our private worlds.  Still, my wife prefers me coming into work with her, I suppose largely to have someone else in the room with her, although most of the time she is asking me to be quiet.  Our office is in an old convent, and we all have our cells, two or three persons to one of these little rooms, which further imposes distance between us as an office. My wife tells me that part of the problem is my sketchy grasp of Lithuanian.  I'm not very good at conversing in this language even if I pick up most of what is being said around me.  It takes me to...

My wife got upset with the image of grubs I posted on facebook the other day, under which I noted how they had invaded our yard.  She said it was like letting everyone know you have head lice or something.  I suppose it is a little too close to home, but the image drew a lot of reactions, ranging from how others had the same problem, to ways of cooking grubs and whether you can use them for fishing.   For me it was kind of a watershed event, as I finally figured out what happened to the decorative almond tree we gave up on a few years ago and replaced with a magnolia tree.  One side had died and there seemed no way to get it to grow back leaves.  Turns out these little grubs love grass, plant and tree roots, and had eaten away at one side of the almond tree.  Hoping to keep the magnolia tree clean, I dug them all up around the tree roots. It also explained the brown patches in the grass.  My wife was convinced it was the result of the dog peeing o...

 As I look over my posts, I realize I sound a bit too much like an MSNBC pundit lashing out at the tomfoolery on the right, without really adding much to the conversation.  I post links, but this is information anyone can find if they make a small amount of effort.  There really is no point wasting time on these rightwing talking heads, as they will say anything to boost their television ratings. So where to go with this blog?  With the old gang reduced to the rare appearance of Trippler, there is nothing left of the former reading group.  Most new comments are spam, which I delete as I try to keep this blog clean of viruses.  I've had complaints in the past from persons who have tried to read my posts only to be hit with virus alerts.  Of course, these days viruses disguise themselves as virus alerts.   The internet has become a virtual war zone.  You don't know what to take seriously, what to make fun of, and what to simply avoid....

Emma Raducanu is thoroughly enjoying life, making a stunning entry at the Met Gala.  Normally, I wouldn't think much of such events, but in this case it was proof Emma was vaccinated, as the organizers required it.  You won't find Novak Djokovic or Daniil Medvedev at the Met.  Both have refused to take the vaccine, as have many other professional tennis players on the WTA circuit.  Why?  That's anyone's guess as they refuse to give details other than saying it is their "choice." Djokovic was steamrolling his way through the tour this year before his highly public meltdown at the Olympics.  Novak had won three grand slam events, and if he had won the Olympics and the US Open, would have won a "Golden Slam" as they call it, the first man ever to do so.  Alas, it was not to be.  He got ousted in the semi-finals and pulled out of a mixed-doubles match without consulting his partner, Nina Stojanovic, after an apparent shoulder injury from throwing his...

For years now, we have been told we are sheeple for heeding the advice of government, but there is a breaking point .  There is so much foolishness that it is hard to hold the contempt I feel for persons like Joe Rogan, who uses his social media clout to peddle ivermectin .  Of course, the irony is that the same people that call us sheeple are now taking sheep anti-parasitic medicine specifically aimed at worms. Still, the level of stupidity is too much to take.  This was never anything more than a stop-gap solution when medical researchers were looking for anything that might effectively battle COVID.  Most of these "cures" have since been discredited, but they resurface when conservative talk show hosts look to boost their ratings.  They know that they will not only attract a sympathetic audience but also a fair amount of nay-sayers anxious to set them straight.  It's a fool's errand to try to do so, as these persons love nothing more than taunting the e...

Like so much in this latest installment of Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien , the quote appears to come from The   Bible , but is apparently a coarse translation found in The Living Bible, as the King James translation of Proverbs 16:27 simply says "an ungodly man diggeth up evil," which seems closer to the mark in the case of David.   I should have left well enough alone but watched Alien: Covenant this weekend.  We are led to believe that he and Elizabeth ran into some difficulty on this mysterious planet.  All we see of her is a headstone planted in what David calls the garden, after meeting his doppelganger Walter, who had arrived with the crew of the Covenant to this foreboding planet.  This film is largely a showcase for Michael Fassbender, who plays both roles.  Humans become incidental or rather incubators for the alien life forms David has been playing with on the planet. He claims Elizabeth was hit by the virus, one he apparently unleashed o...

It seems there a lot of conservative folks out there who are impressed with what the Taliban has accomplished in such short order and would like to repeat it in the United States, among them the Navy Seal who claims to have been the one who took Osama bin Laden out.  He's changed his tune a little since then, now claiming he would only need nine guys to save Americans still trapped in Kabul.  However, the Right-Wingers once consigned to the fringe are raving on the internet how effective the Taliban was in its assault, including "Li'l Fucker" Carlson.  These Magaheads believe that the Fall of Kabul represents the end of Liberalism, and the validation of their autocratic conservative principles.   I suppose we need a recap of events to let these Magaheads know the war was generated not under the guise of Liberal principles, but the need to create conflict to validate a gargantuan military industrial complex that helps propel our economy.  Dick and Rummy d...

Out of curiosity, I watched Prometheus again the other night, at least the second half, as I caught it in progress on television.  I wondered if I had missed something the first time around, but no, it was just as painfully boring to watch with an odd sort of God fixation that seemed to owe more to Erich von Daniken than any deep existential thoughts on what it means to be where we are in space and time.  I'm glad someone else thought the same thing , but for the most part Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien got rave reviews like this one . Part of the problem is the screenwriting. Damon Lindelof is probably best known for driving Lost into the gutter with its shift from playful science fiction themes to a search for some ancient godhead , although I would argue that even with the reduction of episodes per season it had lost all its steam and crawled to a sad ending, making me wonder why I had invested so much time in this nonsense. Damon had a chance to redeem himself with Pro...